Images from the Past: Intertextuality in Japanese Premodern Literature

• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Fondazione Università Ca' Foscari 2022
• Series: Ca' Foscari Japanese Studies 7
• Subjects: Katsura Bunji I,Tsuruya Nanboku IV,Kana literature,Shinkokinshū,Court Diary,Buddhism,Sūtras,Dōgen,Commentaries,Kokin wakashū,Temporality,Outer writings,Kawara-no-in,Intertextuality,Premodern Japanese literature,Utatane,Nihon ryōiki,Re-interpretation,Sarayashiki,Ise monogatari,Nun Abutsu,San'yūtei Enchō,Religion,Fujiwara no Shunzei (Toshinari),Female enlightenment,Chinese novels,Ki no Tsurayuki, Kagerō nikki,Roland Barthes,Waka,Edo literature,Fujiwara no Teika (Sadaie),Japanese poetry,Text,Sharebon,Baba Bunkō,Morishima Chūryō,Layers of narration in intertextuality,Gender dynamics,Classical Chinese literature,Inner scriptures,Genji monogatari,Book indexes,Kabuki,Metatextuality,Nō theatre,Sarashina nikki,Yomihon,Zen,Fantastic literature,Mythologies
• Online Access: Open Access: DOAB: description of the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication

 This volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and career stages to rethink the role and scope of intertextuality in the context of premodern Japan. From antiquity to the rise of modernity, originality through repetition persists as a staple in the literary, performative, and artistic traditions of this country. Nonetheless, rather than slavish recycling of pre-existing tropes, the redeployment of familiar motifs by patterns of borrowing, allusion, and imitation would become a means to explore untrodden creative pathways and craft a shared sense of cultural belonging. Stemming from an international symposium hosted at Ca' Foscari University of Venice in 2021 with the generous support of The Japan Foundation, the papers in this collection offer a thoughtful contribution to this debate by engaging texts from different historical periods, media, and genres - be it poetic, narrative, theatrical, visual, or religious. Although intertextuality may not be a new topic, the essays that follow attest to the enduring appeal of a concept whose explanatory power proves most effective when combined with other methods of inquiry, such as discourse analysis, social sciences, gender studies, and material culture. Thus, while opening new windows onto Japan's literary worlds, these cross-disciplinary approaches provide further insights into the uses (and abuses) of the past in a non-Western non-modern society.